Search and computing engine

• US 8,635,251 B1
• Filed: 05/28/2008
• Issued: 01/21/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 06/29/2007
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Paul Sui-Yuen Chan
• Original Assignee: Paul Sui-Yuen Chan
• Inventors: Chan, Paul Sui-Yuen
• Primary Examiner(s): Rostami, Mohammad S
• Application Number:
  US12/128,268
• Time in Patent Office: 2,064 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 707/803
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/21 Design, administration or maintenance of databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

A system and method to program computers directly from a Web Browser, by cascading sets of retrieval, computation and update requirement specifications to facilitate repetition, decision and execution control logics, without using query, procedural and programming languages. This method provides database product independent Web based access of databases on the Internet with the following capabilities: creating a database dictionary/directory for describing existing or new databases, tables, columns, and data values; creating new databases; searching the directory by keywords to establish entry points to the directory; browsing the directory upward or downward by the user from the entry points to identify information of interest; creating retrieval, computation and update requirement specifications during the directory browsing process; saving, restoring the requirement specifications by name and submitting the requirement specifications to be executed by the computing engine; cascading previously saved requirement specifications as components and sub-components to create newly named requirement specification which can itself be saved or executed.

Claims

1. A method for creating extensible computer applications with a user interface, by cascading sets of retrieval, computation and update requirement specifications to facilitate repetition, decision and execution control logics, without user input of natural, procedural and programming language and without generating any source codes and executable computers programs;

said extensible computer application is composed of unlimited levels of components and sub-components;

each component is consists of one or more sets of requirement specifications previously created;

newly created components consists of multiple existing components are useable to create higher level components;

said method for building applications with no limitation in size and complexity;

said method provides database product independent Web based access of databases on the Internet preforming the following steps;

a. creating a database dictionary/directory in the form of a two way hierarchical structure with a keyword index for describing existing or new databases tables, columns, and data values;

b. creating new databases on the Internet;

c. keyword scan by the user in said dictionary to identify available keywords;

d. searching said directory by keywords to establish entry points to the directory;

e. browsing said directory upward or downward by the user from the said entry points to identify information of interest step by step;

f. creating retrieval and computation requirement specifications by the user during the directory browsing process;

g. creating update and deletion requirement specifications for existing information and addition of new information during the directory browsing process;

h. saving, restoring said requirement specifications by name and submitting said requirement specifications to be executed by the computing engine;

i. cascading previously saved requirement specifications as components and sub-components to create a newly named requirement specification which can itself be saved as a component or executed;

j. specification of said retrieval/update requirements, repetition and decision control logic from said databases during the directory browsing comprise user;

selecting one or more tables from said databases;

selecting one or more columns and/or column group from said tables;

selecting of one or more data values and/or data value groups and/or data value ranges from said columns;

selecting common columns from said selected tables, and criterion for the purpose of integrating multiple tables into a single table;

said criterion must be based on the selecting of equal, not equal, greater, smaller, greater or equal, smaller or equal values of the selected common columns;

selecting sort columns and/or sort order;

selecting group-by columns and/or group-by order from said selected tables;

k. specification of said computation requirements, decision and execution control logic from said databases during the directory browsing comprise user;

selecting one or more tables from said databases;

selecting one or more columns and/or column groups from said tables;

selecting one or more data values and/or data value ranges and/or data value groups from said tables;

selecting group-by columns and/or group-by order;

specifying column aggregation operations;

specifying row aggregation operations;

creating column algebraic and/or logical expressions known as column formulas in said tables;

creating row algebraic and/or logical expressions known as row formulas in said tables;

l. operands of said row and column formulas can be expressed symbolically in terms of names or name combinations in said dictionary/directory, operand can also be constants and functions provided by the Web application server;

said operand can refer to specific data element, specific row or column in the same or different tables;

naming scheme of said operands with specific rules provide a method to address data element, row and column of said tables;

said operand can also be the name of a row or column formula defined previously;

said row formulas, logical expressions and/or aggregations are automatically applied to all the columns of the row unless restricted by other specification of computation requirements;

said column formulas, logical expressions and/or aggregations are automatically applied to all the rows of the column unless restricted by other specification of computation requirements;

said sets of retrieval/update and computation requirement specifications can be saved and restored with a given name;

said operand can also be the name of a set of requirement specifications saved previously, in which case the requirement specifications will be executed upon submission;

said formulas and logical expressions can also be expressed in terms of built-in functions provided by the computing engine with said operands as arguments of said functions to facilitate execution control logics;

m. said naming scheme used to name operands in row and column formulas are defined as follows;

data elements in any table can be named in the form of X.A.B.C.D;

said name addresses the data items of column B in the rows of table A in database X with the value of column C equals D;

if said name represents more than one data items, it will be used as an operand of an aggregate or built-in function;

if X is omitted in the name, X is defaulted to be the database currently selected;

if A is omitted, A is defaulted to be the table currently selected;

if B is omitted in the name, expressed as A.C.D of database X, said name references all the rows in table A with the value of column C equal D;

if C and D are omitted in the name, expressed as A.B of database X, said name references all the data items in column B of table A;

if A, C and D are omitted in the name of an operand, said name references all the data items of column B of the table currently selected;

if A, B and C are omitted in the name of an operand, said name references all the rows with data value of the first column of the table currently selected equals D;

all names of column and row formulas defined within the same set of requirement specification are unique;

all names of requirement specifications saved are unique.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said method is implemented as a Web application server, comprising at least one Search and Computing engine with a Web browser user interface to perform said steps.

3. The method of claim 1, comprising:

a1. said Web application server receiving input from end-users and returning responses to end-users to perform said steps;

b1. communicating between the Web browsers and the Web application server uses Markup Language commonly supported by Web browsers;

c1. said Web application server interacting with one or more database servers to access information in the databases on the Internet;

communicating between the Web application server and the database server uses query language commonly supported by database systems;

d1. said application server creating all the logic required to automatically generate one or more queries to the database servers according to said requirement specifications (i.e. requirements) and processing the responses of the queries from the database servers;

e1. said application server creating all the logics required to automatically perform computations according to requirement specifications, to generate Markup Language Web server responses to the Web browsers, and to update the database without user input of database query language, programming or program script language, natural language like queries and without generating source codes and computer programs and without using any Web browser plugin.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein said Web application server, Web browsers and database servers reside on one or more computers on the Internet.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said dictionary/directory structure provides viewing of:

a2. the directory, showing the relationships between databases, tables, columns and data values wherein databases, tables, columns and data values can all be organized by multiple levels of subject categories and sub-categories, each node in said hierarchy can have more than one parent nodes and more than one child nodes;

b2. a detail description of each database and database group in said directory, of each table and each table group in said databases, of each column and each column group in said tables, of each data value and each value group in said columns with enumerated data type;

c2. an URL, database product used and a second name of each database and table;

d2. a data type, format, value range, a second name and all other necessary information of each table column for creating and accessing said database tables;

e2. an index of significant keywords, comprising at least one dictionary, extracted from the names and descriptions of databases, database groups, tables, table groups, columns, column groups, enumerated data values, enumerated value groups, text data values and contents of document type data wherein each keyword index entry in said dictionary points to one or more nodes in the directory;

said keyword index is an integral part of the dictionary/directory.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein said dictionary/directory facilities searching by user input of keywords, the results of the search comprising all the paths leading from the relevant nodes in said hierarchical structure, which may be data values or data value groups, columns or column groups, tables or table groups, databases or database groups, to the root of said directory.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said directory browsing can be started from any node on said search paths by the user to transverse upward or downward within the directory one step at a time, in order to identify information of interest.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein said directory browsing by the user automatically presents a detail description of the object of interest to the user at each step;

the system is completely self-documented.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein said sets of retrieval, update and computation requirement specifications saved previously can be restored, reviewed, changed, and saved again with the same or a different name and submitted for execution.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein sets of requirement specifications saved previously can be restored and executed automatically in a given order or saved with a name to facilitate cascading execution control logics.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein subsets of said steps can be implemented as a Web application server with a Web browser user interface to perform said steps.

12. The method of claim 1, said dictionary/directory can also be used to maintain relationships between any objects to facilitate directory searching and directory browsing of these objects by keywords.

13. The method of claim 1, said steps or subset of said steps can be implemented using user interfaces and server technologies other than Web Browser and Web application server.

14. The method of claim 2, wherein said Web Browser user interface comprising:

a3. using Hyperlinks to facilitate upward/downward directory transversal;

b3. using Check Box controls to facilitate selecting columns/column groups and data value/data value groups;

c3. using Select Option controls with Pull-Down menus and Text Input field for selecting data values and data values range;

d3. using Check Box control for selecting common columns and Select Option Pull-Down menu for selecting criterion, comprising at least one of equal, not equal, greater, smaller, greater or equal, smaller or equal, to facilitate integrating multiple tables into a single table;

e3. using the Include and Exclude Button controls to facilitate decision and repetition control logics;

f3. using the Total, Average, Count, Maximum and Minimum Button controls to facilitate execution of aggregation control logics;

g3. using the Define, Compute Button controls with Text Input fields for defining row and column formulas and/or logical expressions to facilitate repetitive computation, execution and decision control logics;

h3. using the Make Button control to facilitate repetitive update control logics;

i3. using the Save, Restore, Review and Update Button controls with Text Input fields and Hyperlinks to facilitate creating new and modifying existing requirement specifications;

j3. using the Add, Replace and Delete Button controls with Text Input fields for adding new data or updating existing data in said databases;

k3. using the New, Build Button controls with Hyperlinks and Text Input fields for adding or modifying information in the Dictionary/Directory;

l3. using the Execute and Save Button controls with Text Input field and Hyperlinks for cascading existing requirement specifications as components of a newly named requirement specification to facilitate execution control logics;

m3. using the Execute, Submit and Report Buttons with Text Input field and Hyperlinks to facilitate invocation of one or more requirement specification sets.